Two Worlds

"Much anticipation and hype for what is, lamentably, a broken game."

Having followed the development of Two Worlds since it's conception, I was more than excited when the game was finally released. At last a co-op multiplayer RPG experience on the Xbox 360, without an monthly online fee. I didn't expect what the game claimed was "Oblivion on steroids", and I was more than aware that Two Worlds was more of a hack and slash adventure more in the vein of Diablo, than anything else. To come in with such high hopes, only to have them dashed upon the rocks of devastation... well, it's vexing nearly beyond words.

The game system of Two Worlds is fairly simplistic, but that isn't a bad thing in and of itself. The single player game features a male human as your only option, which again, would have been fine if a decent number of customization options had been incorporated into the character design. Instead, you have less than ten faces to choose from, about four hairstyles (which are all quite similar), and simple adjustments like nose size, and the shape of the jaw. You can adjust the hair color, but only with presets, and no R-G-B sliders for custom colors. This sets the bar for the entire game, and it really only gets worse from here since this first screen is more or less a lie about what your character will look like. What you adjust is a high-poly model that doesn't look half bad, but in game the polygon count is much lower, causing the player to scratch his head and wonder why the player doesn't look like the guy in the character editor.

Fight monsters, level up, get gold, buy better stuff: a classic RPG formula that has been done since the good old days of Dungeon Siege, and Diablo. So how did Top Peak studios manage to fail it? To their credit, the stacking system (which allows two identical items to be united into a single, stronger item) is a bit interesting, and a welcome change to the genre, but in the end it fails to make up for the myriad of other problems within the challenge level, and aspects of skill and character development.

Two Worlds has been compared repeatedly to Oblivion, and Blizzard's Diablo series; Oblivion in asthetics, and Diablo in character development. Other than the look of the game, and the near identical hotkey wheel, Two Worlds is not Oblivion, far to different to compare. On the other hand, your hero levels up in almost the exact same way to players in Diablo II: Five skill points to spend across strength, dexterity, vitality, and willpower, as well as a skill point for one of several skills.

Even in this emulation of an absolutely classic game, Two Worlds fails utterly. Consider this: In Diablo II, a game nearly six years old, each player had thirty skills to unlock via a tree system, with each of the seven classes having completely unique abilities. This makes play interesting, fresh and innovative. Surely Top Peak copied this awesome gameplay aspect as well? Nope. Instead, each character potentially has access to every single skill in the game, which in high end online games would unbalance the 'role' based nature of online parties (but more on online in a moment). You can be everything, but in the end, nothing. This is largely built on the fact that the majority of skills are passive, granting damage bonuses, critical chance increases and the like. Nice, but when you only have one combo on your weapon, it is going to get unbelievably dull very quickly. What few skills are active demand an extremely specific scenario to be used, such as unhorsing an enemy with a polearm, or knocking the sword from an enemies hand, but only when equipped with a swordbreaker.

The alternatives: archer, mage, or rogue are nearly unplayable in a single player game. Particularity the rogue, since a beginning player is unable to attack while sneaking until the proper skill is bought from a trainer. Archers have to draw an arrow, and "charge it" until a bar fills up. This can be misleading as unless the bar is more than half full, it seems like no damage is done, and since enemies are nearly always in groups, your archer is going to have to use a sword in the end, so why not be a warrior? In an interesting twist, the player is able to buy and use traps that immobilize the enemy while doing damage or bombs that explode for massive damage. A great idea, now if only the hit detection wasn't so awful that enemies quite literally run across the traps unfettered. Too many times did I lay a field of traps in front of me and begin firing arrows, thinking the dozen or so traps would stop the three wyverns, only to have the enemies run over the traps and attack me. As bad as that is, the detection is even WORSE on a hill.

Really, the only viable alternative to a simple sword slinger, is a mage. The spell stacking is probably the best thing in the game, letting you use booster cards to increase your spells in various ways. Yet, there are a few noodle scratchers with the mage as well, such as a lack of penalty when using armor, giving you no incentive whatsoever to wear a robe. Also, you can only make and hotkey three spells at a time. Sure you can access your spellbook and switch at anytime, but really, constant breaks in the gameplay are only a result of poor design.

Whatever you choose to be, the difficulty will remain the same: insanely difficult, or ridiculously easy. The game really fails to balance the gameplay and either throws enemies at you that die with a few swipes of your sword, or one hit kill. And note: anything larger, even by a few feet, like say a cyclops will one hit kill regardless if you have twenty hit points or ten thousand.

Death is largely pointless, with no more penalty than forcing the player to walk back from the nearest resurrection shrine. The exception is hard mode which simply chides the player with a message of "Game Over". So if you want to beat the game on hard, good luck, you'll need it. Because of this difficulty problem, coupled with some of the dullest AI seen in years, the player spends most of the story missions running past waves of enemies to whatever the current objective is.

Whew. With all those problems, the game at least has a good story, right. No, not even that. Unless you are able to ignore and accept painfully cliched plot devices, like rescuing your sister, and defeating the guy in black armor, it's going to be brutal. Add to that, the fact that each line of dialogue is delivered in the vein of ye english olde (not even accurate vernacular at that), and you not only don't care about the people of Two Worlds, but they become something of a joke, a farcical commentary on itself. The hero himself is at the worst of this, with lines like "Looks like my inlaws!" when fighting some enemies, "Ahhh! Bandits!" having spotted WYVERNS, "Ohh! That tickles!" when jumping in a lake, and my personal non-favorite: "It's raining it's pouring, the old man is snoring!" when it rains. If it was intentional, it would be hilarious, but I found that heavy sobbing and groans were my typical reactions. Fortunately, dialogue can be skipped.

These people send your hero on various quests that are the pinnacle of mundane. This is mainly due to the fact that the actual quest mechanics are so poorly done that quests fall under a few categories: go kill stuff, find out people are dead, or activate switches or doors. A bit heavy handed, but there you are. Little is done that is clever or innovative, quests become tedious chores that amount to little more than a glorified time-sink.

Even shopping, and inventory management is a chore. Some weapons seem nice, but the game fails to inform you whether a sword is one or two-handed, so if you bought two katana's, wanting to dual weild, oops! Wasted money. Some items just can't be equipped, though the game won't tell you why, such as the swordbreaker, which my character had fulfilled all the necessary requirements, but still couldn't equip for some reason.

While on the subject of inventory, it was obviously designed with the pc in mind. Navigating with the controller is not only difficult, it can be near impossible to select certain items in the shops as the inventories tend to be laid out in staggered rows. The quest log is the worst of this, featuring a light brown box over a off-white parchment. Was the GUI designer colorblind? This is not something that should have been an issue, but I found myself squinting to see what quest I was selecting over and over again.

Okay, so single player is a bit of a bust. Co-op mutiplayer had better be good. Again, Two Worlds takes a great idea and does their best to botch it up. Your choices for mutiplay are PVP and PVE/RPG... what? That's right, you have to have separate characters for all three game modes. Who thought this would be a good idea? And without PVP to break up the monotony of the RPG game (which doesn't even allow the players to play the main quest line), it's going to get boring fast. Almost as fast as the game freezes, and boots the players out of the game. (Note that as of the time of this writing, this problem was caused by a lack of american servers for the game, and may no longer be an issue) . Character options are what should have been done in single player, and include sex option, as well as the choice to play an elf, though they all play pretty much the same. In addition, you get to choose a class, which starts you off better equipped for your current play style.

Seems interesting enough, but the party mechanics are flawed for a number of reasons. Take Air magic for instance, the school that contains all the games healing spells. A healer could help the party quite a bit, buffing and healing the fighters. Well, apparently, the makers of Two Worlds had other ideas, and decided that mages can only cast buffing/healing spells on themselves. Anybody who has ever played an MMORPG can tell you why this completely screws with party mechanics. Parties are built on role based play: the tank up front holds monster and takes the bulk of damage, damage dealing mages and archers attack from afar, while the priest cleric heals and buffs the fighters. The elimination of teamwork causes the party to be made of individuals and ruins much of the gameplay. Nothing MESHES WITH THIS GAME.

PVP mode is similarly flawed, giving nearly unanimous preference to archers, who can slaughter melee fighters with ease, and outlast mages since they have infinity arrows while mages mana will eventually expire.

On the technical side of things, the game doesn't look terrible, not great either, but bearable. The framerate hits constant walls though, stopping completely during crosscountry trips, as well as during combat. Because of this, this game is the first I've ever played where lagdeath was an issue in single player. On any other game it would be a minor annoyance, in Two Worlds, it's just another tear on my cheek.

The music, despite being lauded on the back of the box is so ambient, that you won't even notice it, like a specter floating in the background, it's there, but only just. Turn it up, and you'll hear music that's okay standard Oblivion/World of Warcraft knock offs, not bad in any respect, just not particularly remarkable.

Sound effects, however, are quite remarkable in the fact that they are both annoying and misplaced. Holding traps make a whooshing sound like a line of bolo's, despite the fact that the trap is made of metal clamps like a bear trap. Other whines and battle sounds seem odd and just slightly off, which may have something to do with the fact that they tend to lag, playing a second or two late.

So let's sum up Two Worlds: Poor skill progression, uneven difficulty, severely flawed hit detection, cliched storyline, broken/outdated quest mechanics, dysfunctional online, painful dialogue, framerate problems, clumsy inventory navigation, and sound glitches. I not only feel ripped off from paying full price for what I expected to be a wonderful game, but jaded by the fact that a small amount of gamers are saying if you can look past all the flaws, you'll find a great game. I find this akin to twenty dollars underneath a pile of garbage. Do you really want to sift through a mountain of garbage, just for that small prize. Enjoyable though it may be, was it worth it? After all, there are some stinks that will never come off.

Final Score 2/10

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/05/07

Game Release: Two Worlds (US, 08/23/07)